Brian Michael Norton
Professor
Biography
Mike received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University in 2006. His research is rooted in eighteenth-century English and comparative literature, focusing especially on the novel, the Enlightenment, ethics, and the essay. He is particularly interested in intersections of forms and ideas in the period.
Degrees
2006, Ph.D., New York University
1998, M.A., New School for Social Research
1995, B.A., New School for Social Research
Research Areas
Eighteenth-century literature, the Enlightenment, ethics, aesthetics and everyday life
Courses Regularly Taught
The eighteenth-century novel; Restoration and eighteenth-century literature; comparative literature
Publications
Norton, Brian Michael. “Aesthetics, Science, and the Theater of the World.” New Literary History, vol. 51, no. 3, 2020, pp. 639–59, https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2020.0038.
Norton, Brian Michael. “Happiness.” The Oxford Handbook of Samuel. edited by Jack Lynch, Oxford University Press, 2022.
Norton, Brian Michael. “The Spectator, Aesthetic Experience and the Modern Idea of Happiness.” English Literature (Venezia. Online), vol. 1, no. 1, 2015, https://doi.org/10.14277/2420-823X/EL-2-1-15-16p.
Norton, Brian Michael. “The Spectator and Everyday Aesthetics.” Lumen, vol. 34, 2015, pp. 123-136. https://doi.org/10.7202/1028515ar
Norton, Brian Michael. “Laurence Sterne and the Aesthetics of Everyday Life.” Sterne, Tristram, Yorick: Tercentenary Essays on Laurence Sterne, vol. 1, 2015, pp. 219-238.
Norton, Brian Michael. “Ancient Ethics and Modern Happiness: A Study of Three Treatises in Enlightenment Britain.” Eighteenth-Century Life, vol. 38, no. 2, 2014, pp. 47–74, https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-2645936.
Norton, Brian Michael. “Sterne Studies at the Tercentenary.” Eighteenth-Century Life, vol. 38, no. 1, Duke University Press, 2014, pp. 128–33, https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-2380088.
Norton, Brian Michael. “‘Emma Courtney’, Feminist Ethics, and the Problem of Autonomy.” The Eighteenth Century (Lubbock), vol. 54, no. 3, 2013, pp. 297–315, https://doi.org/10.1353/ecy.2013.0024.
Norton, Brian Michael. Fiction and the Philosophy of Happiness : Ethical Inquiries in the Age of Enlightenment. Bucknell University Press, 2012.
Norton, Brian Michael. The Art of Life: Ethics, Happiness and the Philosophical Novel in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France. 2006. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.
Norton, Brian Michael. “The Moral in Phutatorius’s Breeches: Tristram Shandy and the Limits of Stoic Ethics.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 18, no. 4, 2006, pp. 405–23, https://doi.org/10.1353/ecf.2006.0064.
Office Hours
Spring 2025
W 2:00pm-4:00pm (Zoom)
Th 2:30pm-3:30pm (In-person)
